Pieces of Her Life
by St. Aelphaba
Summary: Immediately after he says goodbye to her on Bad Wolf Bay, the Doctor goes back to Rose's flat at the Powell Estate to clean out the pieces of her life containing him  or any other alien technology  out.  AU because he hasn't met Donna.


A/N: I got this idea from a post made by cyruspotnoodle and askheryourself on tumblr. They're partially to blame for all of this.

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><p>He doesn't want to do this, doesn't want to go through picking up the pieces of the life she left behind when he has just left her behind. It's been mere minutes after Canary Wharf - a few hours for him, but what is an hour to the time they <em>could<em> have had?

He parks in the same place he often parked to take Rose home, in that little courtyard near her apartment. A part of him - no, the majority of him - is screaming for him to go back in time just a few hours longer, so he can stop this whole thing, or at least touch her again and tell her the words he came so close to saying. But he can't, and anyway, the TARDIS won't let him, so he lands here, close to when he left but a few miles from _where,_ and he takes the slow walk up the steps to Rose's and Jackie's apartment.

He remembers the first time he went up these steps, chasing a plastic hand and ending up finding more than he bargained for in the form of a curious, beautiful, pink-and-yellow human. He was all ears and hurting then, and she saved him, from that very first day, as she chased him back down these steps and across the park, persistently asking him questions, smiling like they were sharing a secret that she may have believed even then. She saved him.

Or so he thought. But maybe he would have been better off without all that _humanity,_ without her holding his hand and showing him the universe through new eyes, without her showing him compassion, how to love, how to fall in love, how to _be loved_.

He reaches the top of the stairs, pivots like an automaton, practically numb from the emotions he is feeling, and walks the short distance down the hall to Jackie's apartment. He doesn't want to do this, but he has to. He can't let there be any chance of random alien technology being found in Jackie's apartment by the officials who will have to clean it. Not even the Bazoolium they brought Jackie earlier today - not even the television, sonic'd to receive more channels than was technically paid for - not even that lipstick Rose bought on a planet over a year ago, which contained traces of minerals not found on Earth.

So he opens the door with the key Rose gave him so long ago, and he gets to work cleaning out the small alien trinkets left in this apartment. He won't have to clean everything; he will leave most of the Earth things for the police and renters to clear out.

The kitchen is easy: he un-sonics the microwave, pockets the Bazoolium, puts a few plates in a stack on the table to take with him to the TARDIS later. A few alien fruits, some tea from the planet of Relare in the next galaxy over, and he's done.

He knows that not every room will be this easy. Small memories are already beginning to enter his mind each time he looks again at another item on the small pile on the table. He remembers how Jackie's tea was - with a slight laugh that scares him a little, he thinks about how she managed to botch up even Relare Honey Tea, some of the best tea in the universe.

He imagines that she'll be trying to console Rose with a cup of tea right now. He laughs again, and then swallows, regretting any feelings of humor at a time like this.

The fruit. He and Rose had picked those berries from a real Jombuli tree on Dogebe about 3000 years ago - just a few months ago, though, for them. He remembers her laughter as she smashed a juicy berry to his lips and told him to eat it. He remembers the feeling of the juice dribbling down his chin, and how Rose had leaned up and kissed it off of him, her lips tasting tart like the berries and sweet like time.

He swallows and moves out of the kitchen. The memories are going to be bad no matter where he cleans next, so he decides to get the worst of it over with. Rose's bedroom.

It's another short trip down a hall, and as he slowly moves along, he eyes the photographs on the walls and sees a few he might take on the TARDIS with him just for memory's sake. Rose, a chubby, smiling child, posing on a bike. Rose, a grimacing teenager in a leather jacket - oh, he would have loved to see that in action. Rose in a purple hooded jacket, captured mid-laughter with his previous, blue-eyed regeneration smiling down at her serenely, lovingly. He knows he should feel honored that Jackie has a picture of him on her wall - and a picture of his Ninth regeneration, at that. He wonders if Rose had seen the photo, seen the way his gaze was fixed on her in the photo, and insisted it go on display.

He makes it to Rose's bedroom, pink light flooding in through the cracked door. He pushes it open. Rose has never kept her things particularly tidy - he found a purple shirt lying on the railing in the TARDIS just minutes before he landed here - and this room is certainly no exception. He will have to clean up the mess of clothing and books on her floor in order to find the things that do not belong on this planet.

He stands looking around for a while, before actually getting to work, starting with the patch of floor near her empty bookshelf. He throws her clothes in a pile and puts her books on the bookshelf, wondering why she never organized, knowing that it was because she never stayed at home long enough to tidy up. This room had become her temporary room, a special visitor's room reserved only for her. Her real room was in the TARDIS. Almost everything that _really_ matters is still there.

He doesn't know if he'll ever be able to face cleaning out her room on the TARDIS. He knows that the TARDIS will preserve it for him anyway.

He finds nothing extraterrestrial near her bookshelf, so he moves on to the floor surrounding the foot of the bed. Here, he finds the actual _Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy_, which Earth won't have for another millennium, and a few items of clothing made from alien materials. He almost smiles at how domestic this feels - travelling the universe had literally become Rose's _life_ - but he catches himself and frowns deeply instead. With this section of her room tidied off, he crawls to the area of floor by her closet.

The first thing he finds is a leather-bound book of Earth origin with no title. Curious, he opens it up to find Rose's scrawl all over the pages. It starts in 2005, but there's a second date in parentheses that states that it's also the year of 4500. He reads the scribbling on the next few lines:

_(The first line is relative time, and the second line is the time where I am.) I haven't kept a diary since I was 15, but I figured I should probably start so I can make sure I know what day it really is. What if I keep travelling in time and eventually lose track of how old I am?_

_That doesn't seem likely, since the Doctor told me he's 900 years old - so he must keep track. And there's a clock in the TARDIS set to my relative time, so I'll always know the date._

_Still, I worry sometimes. _

_I'm also worried someone might find this and think I'm mad. But I suppose if I keep it in the TARDIS, no one can. _

_He's so infuriating. He's fantastic, I mean, but he's so angry. I wish I knew how to calm him down more. I know he's got other things bottled up… I wish I knew how to help him more._

He stops reading there, thinking, _Oh, Rose, you helped me more than you think._ He puts the book down, afraid of invading her privacy. Then he picks the book back up and flips to a later page, unable to _not_ look.

_17 April, 2007, TARDIS time_

_(21 November, 2006, Earth)_

_I haven't written in this diary for ages. Looking back, I can't believe I've been travelling with him for two years. Mum has no idea… For all she knows, I've been gone a few months. I visit her less than I should. But I don't think the Doctor likes visiting her very much._

_Since I last wrote, he's changed a lot. I mean, he regenerated, so he's a new man. He's got a new personality and everything. I liked him just fine last time, but this one…he's special in a different way, I guess. Back during the first version of him I met, sometimes I would catch him looking at me special when he thought I wasn't looking. But now, he just always looks at me like that. _

_We also hug a lot more._

_Dunno why I'm even writing in this after so long, but I think I just needed to process that. It's been about three weeks since he regenerated and I already notice those differences. I wonder if anything will happen between us…_

_Okay, I feel like I'm 14 again. Gonna stop writing now._

The next entry is dated a month later, scribbled down sometime after they reentered the TARDIS from the werewolf incident with Queen Victoria.

_I especially feel like a schoolgirl now, because I know that I just got chased by a werewolf, and I know that I just met Queen Victoria, and I just got knighted and banished, and all that… but I can't stop thinking about just one thing._

_We kissed._

_Sort of in the heat of the moment, a passing chaste thing after a hug. I always thought that if it would happen, it would be intense and long and passionate, or at least something would happen like I would initiate it and then he would push me back and avoid my eyes and ship me back home first thing. But this was a mutual decision, spur-of-the-moment, short, but still passionate. We kissed and then ran._

_I think it was perfect for us._

_He kissed me after, too. After everything was over, we made it back to the TARDIS, and he opened the door and showed me inside and closed it, and then he held me by the waist and kissed me firmly on the lips. _

_The second one was a bit less chaste…_

He catches himself smiling and blushing at the memory, of how his lips had desperately found hers for quick reassurance in the heat of the battle, and how she had grinned at him as if it was the most natural thing in the world to do at a moment such as that. He now realizes, clutching Rose's diary in his shaking hands, that it was.

He flips ahead a few entries.

_It's 2007 and I don't care about the date right now, it doesn't matter._

_There was a prophecy, a Beast of some kind. And it said I was going to die in battle. _

_The Doctor said it lied, and it didn't get everything right. It said it was going to live, but it died._

_Still, I'm shaking a little bit, writing this. The way he looked at me and held me when we made love tonight… It was as if he'd already lost me._

_I don't want to die, but I'm not afraid of it. What I'm scared of is how the Doctor's going to be once I'm gone._

_He barely opens up to me, sometimes. I know it's selfish of me to think that I matter that much to him, but I know he loves me. He's never said it. I don't think he ever will say it. I think that's okay. I don't need him to confirm what I know is the truth. His love for me isn't anything like the words of a beast or religion. There are no rules, there's no questioning the truth of it. It just is._

_I'm so scared he'll be broken when he loses me. Even if the beast lied, and I die in 70 years… That's still too soon. It's just a tiny fraction of his life._

_I just lov_

The entry ends there, and he remembers that night clearly. He had awoken in a panic, his naked body twisted in the sheets, with Rose's body nowhere to be found. He ran around the TARDIS in a desperate fit, without so much as a dressing gown to cover his body. When he found her in the TARDIS library, hunched over a book and writing quickly in the dim light, he almost cried with happiness that she was safe, with anger that she had left him, with despair that she _would_ leave him. He pulled her to him in a hug and selfishly begged her to come back to bed. Without hesitation, she nodded, lacing her fingers with him and leading him back to their shared bedroom.

He had noticed that both of them were shaking that night. After they made love a second time, slowly, soothingly, he found it impossible to fall back asleep. But when Rose awoke, she acted like everything was normal, and he found that he could, too.

He rereads the entry again, wondering what she would have written had he not so selfishly interrupted her. He wonders what the last sentence could have said.

He knows, though. It is a declaration of love, like the inaudible ones she made in every action she took. She loves him, has been declaring her love for him since the _Bad Wolf_, pushing the emotion into him through every kiss, every touch. She loves him, and she told him so herself, less than an hour ago on Darlig Ulv Stranden.

He closes the diary and pockets it, then sets about cleaning the rest of her apartment.

As he leaves, he collects the pictures in their frames on the walls in the hallway. He no longer wonders if his time with Rose, loving Rose and then losing Rose, has been worth it.

It has.

The Doctor leaves the Powell Estate for the last time, leaves his happiness behind him at the foot of the steps leading up, sheds his joy and most of his jubilance on the concrete of the courtyard.

He takes with him the alien artifacts he gave her, keeps the diary, has her love with him always, and lets himself have, just for the moment, one thing she always wanted him to have:

Peace.

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><p>AN: Reviews, as always, would be lovely. I hope you enjoyed it. :)


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